QMed, Inc. Receives 2-Year Extension of Medicare Coordinated Care Demonstration Proj...( EATONTOWN N.J. April 7 2008 /- QM...),Health

EATONTOWN, N.J., April 7, 2008 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- QMed, Inc., (Nasdaq: QMED) today announced it has been granted a two year operating extension from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for its Medicare Coordinated Care Demonstration (MCCD) project in Northern California.

In 2002, The CMS selected 15 sites for a pilot project to test whether providing coordinated care services to Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries with complex chronic conditions can yield better patient outcomes without increasing program costs.

In 2006, the pilot project was extended by CMS for an additional 2 years to QMed and 10 other sites to allow time for further data analyses (4 sites were discontinued).

In December 2007, CMS completed the review of the 4-year evaluation data. As only 3 of the 11 operating sites showed a potential for budget neutrality, CMS offered an extension to QMed (and the 2 other potentially budget neutral sites) for 2 more years to allow further study of the respective programs. The remaining 8 sites will be terminated as scheduled in 2008.

Jane Murray, QMed's president and CEO, said, "Given the political and fiscal sensitivity associated with rising health care costs in the Medicare population, rigorous analysis of randomized trials for coordination of care in the chronically ill is a National mandate to be certain that such approaches are cost-effective and produce quality outcomes. The MCCD pilot, the longest studied randomized Medicare trial of its type, has demonstrated that certain approaches are not cost effective, while others, such as QMed's, may very well be cost effective. Given our proprietary clinical rules engine and unique community-based, provider-facing approach to care
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